On the opening day of #COP28, we hosted a thought-provoking webinar that delved into the intricate relationship between land governance and climate resilience, a critical area of immense importance in the context of global climate challenges and sustainable land use practices. This event aimed to unpack the crucial role of inclusive land governance in building climate resilience.

Climate-change induced disasters and communities’ responses to protect themselves and design solutions have become a top priority on the climate agenda. At the center of mitigation and adaptation discussions have been urban populations, particularly in informal settlements. At the same time, the rural poor with limited or no secure access to land tend to be overlooked.

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP28, will be the 28th United Nations Climate Change conference, held from November 30 until December 12, 2023, at the Expo City, Dubai. The conference has been held annually since the first UN climate agreement in 1992. It is used by governments to agree on policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change.

In this webinar we explore and discuss two multi-partner platforms that process large datasets and provide tools to support decision making in complex, dynamic urban and regional environments. What impacts are they trying to achieve? How do they enhance efforts to engage with the information so produced?

Webinar organized by the FIG Climate Compass Task Force and part of its 'Conversations & Consultations Webinar Series'. Registrations are now open.

While  talk of carbon markets has been prominent of late, offsetting using forest carbon has long been controversial. Carbon markets are trading systems through which countries, businesses, individuals or other entities buy or sell units of greenhouse gas emissions. A newly launched report by the Rainforest Foundation UK, looks at both sides of the coin. 

The aim of this event is increasing public understanding of the links between climate change, disasters, and land tenure rights, and bringing land tenure issues in the climate change discourse, listening particularly to the voices of civil society and youth. The discussion is also expected to bring forth some ideas for action both for the new GFAR Collective Action on land tenure and climate change, and for policy makers.    

NASA’s Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET) has opened a new open, online webinar series: Assessing the Impacts of Fires on Watershed Health. This advanced-level, three-part training will focus on using remote sensing observations for monitoring post-fire impacts on watershed health. Specifically, this training will highlight uses of NASA Earth observations (EO) for pre-fire land cover mapping, watershed delineation and stream mapping, post-fire burn severity mapping, and pre- and post-fire riverine and freshwater water quality.

The symposium "Amazon 2030- Sustainability Issues in the World´s Largest Rainforests Region" is being organised by the Inter-University Sustainable Development Programme (IUSDRP), the International Climate Change Information and Research Programme (ICCIRP), Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) and the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), in collaboration with various organisations.

These webinars aim to raise awareness on the value of tenure security and its contribution to biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management, ecosystem restoration, and climate change mitigation and adaptation while improving food security and local livelihoods.

NASA’s Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET) has opened a new online introductory webinar series: Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Earth Science. This three-part training, presented in English and Spanish, is open to the public and will provide attendees an overview of machine learning in regards to Earth Science, and how to apply these algorithms and techniques to remote sensing data in a meaningful way. Attendees will also be provided with end-to-end case study examples for generating a simple random forest model for land cover classification from optical remote sensing. We will also present additional case studies to apply the presented workflows using additional NASA data.

We are happy to announce the joint IOS-Fair Transitions-LANDac International Conference at the crossroads of the fair transitions and land governance debates in the context of climate change. The conference is structured around the joint challenge of finding ways to make transitions fair and inclusive, for human and non-human life.